Welcome to the Machine
Hello. I’m Robert G. Valiant (not to be confused with Dr. Robert J. Valiant, my father).
“Spastica Rex” is a pseudonym I’ve used for many years on the internet hangouts I frequent. In real life, I generally go by “Bob.”
I’ve spent about 20 years in the field public education. I worked for around seven years as a classroom teacher, spent several years as a technology coordinator for middle and high schools in Seattle, and did one year as “House Adminstrator” (Dean of Students) for a math/science magnet middle school in the Seattle Public Schools. After my employment with the SPS, I managed technology resources for the Seattle Community Technology Alliance and sat on the City of Seattle’s Technology Advisory Board.
Recently, I concluded my career in public education as a bureaucrat for the Intermountain Education Service District in Pendleton, Oregon. In that capacity I was engaged in secondary “improvement,” online-education, staff development events, professional learning communities, home-school, and rural education.
I’ve seen a lot in public education, and I’ve come away feeling that most of what I’ve done — outside of direct work with children — was pointless. In fact, much of it was much worse than pointless.
I’m not the first former educator to feel this way. John Taylor Gato, among others, has voiced many of the concerns I now share. Unlike Gato, I have come to the conclusion that in the context of public education, the profit motive has spun out of control and the results have been disastrous for our children. Most of the problems I see in public education can by blamed directly on educational leadership, and this leadership has been bought, trained, and nurtured by big business and big government. Education “reform” is a perfect symbiotic relationship of bureaucrats and profiteers.
So I quit.
As a parent of public school children, I am no longer willing to “go along to get along,” or hide behind pseudonyms. I’m here to tell my story. I’m here to present an alternative to the disingenuous monolgoue of education reform and school improvement.
I have nothing to lose.
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You can find me on Twittter and Google+. I also spend time at Zerohedge which is an irreverent ”alternative economics” website and forum which I highly recommend.
Bob Valiant – 29 July, 2011
P.S.
To pre-respond (!) to the inevitable criticisms of: “You’re so negative! You can identify problems, but you don’t have any solutions and we have to do something!”
I say:
Well, yeah, I think there are some real solutions to the real problems in public education and I’m going to talk about them. For starters, take a look at the work of Kieran Egan from Simon Fraser University in B.C.
